I moved to the Netherlands from the US to start an academic job in the summer of 2022, purposefully arriving a few months before my work contract was set to start so that I could backpack all over Europe.

After some shorter train trips near my new home base in the Netherlands, I embarked on a longer travel journey around Europe. In total, I visited 5 countries: Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Germany.

Both the shorter trips and longer adventure were great experiences full of amazing people, funny quirks and interesting events, and I would be doing the Internet a disservice by not sharing it all!

Contents

The Stars Aligned!
Netherlands: Eindhoven, Amsterdam, s’Hertogenbosch, Rotterdam
Belgium: Antwerp
France: Paris
Switzerland: Zurich, Lucerne
Germany: Frankfurt, Berlin, Dusseldorf
Final Thoughts: Culture, Re-visiting

This is a bit of a long story. I try to maintain continuity in describing my long train trip through all 5 countries, while also sprinkling in some pictures and details about these places when I visited them before or after the big journey.

All the pictures were taken by me! Enjoy the story :)

The Stars Aligned!

I had always wanted to do a longer “backpacking” trip across Europe after reading stories online and seeing YouTubers document their adventures. I had flipped through the Lonely Planet books that showed the routes you could take, and always dreamt about doing something crazy like spending a few weeks just taking trains and visiting all these unique places. I had plenty of traveling experience already, with my journeys all over the US and Canada, so I was used to the logistics of adventure and moving around. But, I had never embarked to any European countries.

In the fall of 2021, I decided that I wanted to move into a tangentially related field, and I was motivated to learn more beyond what I was completing soon in my masters. I had the credentials to attempt a PhD program acceptance, so I started shopping around online for the right fit. Since I had an interest in traveling to Europe, I applied to opportunities out there too, in the UK and Netherlands.

Only a few weeks or so after I applied to the program in the Netherlands, I got an email that I was invited to the first stage of interviewing. That’s the first thing I learned about applying for positions in Europe: they get back to you a lot faster. I’ll spare the details of interviewing from this travel log, but long story short, I was accepted into the program. The university offered me a job as part of the program, and they immediately started figuring out paperwork to get me a residence permit. I would start living, working, and studying in NL starting in the fall of 2022.

And that was my ticket to travel Europe - I planned to get an apartment a few months early and travel before starting the program. I checked online that I could stay in NL for some time before starting at the university, and began to search for housing.

Netherlands

I visited many places in the Netherlands outside of Eindhoven, including Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Breda, Tilburg, s’Hertogenbosch (known as den Bosch), and more. During my big train trip, I only went to Rotterdam for a day. I explored other cities before I started working to get comfortable before I left for the big trip.

The bikes whiz around everywhere. Something I was caught off guard by was how many people smoked cigarettes - they’re everywhere. The Netherlands is flat and known for its rainy weather, but there were plenty of sunny days this summer due to a drought. I noticed how on clear days, I could really see the stars in the night sky well - the light pollution was not bad at all.

Eindhoven: Home Base!

Eindhoven would be my new home for a few years. I did some Google Maps exploration beforehand to understand where I’d be, and I had modest expectations. The pictures of campus looked nice, and I liked the fact that I would be about about 10 minutes by bike to the train station.

The first big problem: finding housing

Eindhoven is a small city in south Holland where the university I would be working and studying at was located. Finding housing on Facebook was impossible as a single student, and I mean that very seriously… some students who are accepted never find housing, and are told to not come. Others look far away, sometimes an hour out by train. It’s insanity, but the Netherlands is densely populated and very competitive in terms of housing.

Eindhoven, from “Dak van Brabant” - the highest point - an old trash hill that has a nice view of the city.

I applied as soon as possible (probably around February/early March) to the university’s system which could help me find housing, and they came through after a few months to get me a place even though there were no guarantees. I remember getting the email from them that there were 2 rooms available in one of the student houses. I opened it up on my phone early in the morning while I was still in bed, and immediately got up and opened my laptop to go into the system and reserve one of them for me. Even then, I was worried that both might have already been taken.

I purposefully applied to start the lease at a time when a lot of students wouldn’t be moving in, not only so that I would have time to travel before the semester, but also to increase the odds that fewer people were searching for that time period. So I picked like June 1. And that worked.

Arrival and Exploration

I flew from Boston to Amsterdam one-way on a nonstop, 6 hour flight. In Amsterdam, I boarded a train to Eindhoven to pick up my keys and enter my new studio. Luckily, the studio came furnished, so I had one less thing to worry about.

The downtown section of Eindhoven is nice. It’s small, but it’s cute, there’s an outdoor merry-go-round and an indoor shopping mall area. A tall church touches the skies in the center. One of the first things I did was go out and buy a bicycle, because the bike lanes are incredible out here. It poured rain the day I went out to walk to the bike shop, but I was already too committed, and saw no reason not to buy a used bike and ride home… I couldn’t get any more soaked, and the bike was used, so it didn’t matter.

I sheltered for what seemed like the worst part of the rain storm, and then gave up and accepted that I would get soaked. Welcome to the Netherlands. Here’s the bike I got, a little distorted from a wide angle lens. The back rack came in handy to get large cereal boxes from the grocery store. I promptly took it everywhere because it was so easy to get around - NL is flat, and bike lanes are ubiquitous.

One unfortunate thing was that the bike lanes that I could use to directly get on campus were shut down for the summer for construction, because they were rebuilding an entire section of the pathways. So I had to make some very roundabout cycling routes to get where I needed to go if I had to go west. It didn’t become much of a problem once I figured it out, and I could get to the train station or campus within 15 minutes.

Amsterdam

I only visited Amsterdam a few times, well after work started. I wanted to add a few pics here regardless before I dive deeper into the longer train journey. One time I made the trip up there closer to the holiday season, so it was festively lit up. Amsterdam is a beautiful place, and when I go there I can really tell that the smaller cities are like miniature versions of it.

I found an amazing bookstore “Kok Antiquariaat” full of antique books, old maps, typewriters, and eclectic finds like 200 year old birth certificates and pictures. I love this kind of stuff and will definitely go back. I rode the tram a few times to get around - it is modern and smooth, much nicer than Boston :)

Amsterdam Centraal, the main train station, features a grand piano that is free to play! Many stations in the Netherlands have pianos, but they are mostly uprights, and many are in bad shape (broken keys and pedals, etc. because everyone bangs on them). The grand piano was a lot of fun to play.

s’Hertogenbosch: Quiet Life

Something great about NL is that the trains go all over the country, so you can easily visit smaller towns and quaint villages along the main train routes without any hassle. s’Hertogenbosch is along the route from Eindhoven to Amsterdam.

Everyone knows s’Hertogenbosch as den Bosch. It is a quaint, small town, a quiet place to relax, watch the activity on the canals, enjoy the small shops and bike lanes. The atmosphere is laid back and there is wide open space in and around the town to get a break from the denser areas of NL.

The trains are great. You can take your bike on them as well during off-peak hours, so I brought my bike to den Bosch and explored for a little while. There is a massive cathedral near the center.

Rotterdam: Boats & Bridges

I arrived in Rotterdam to spend one night there before going to Paris. It was a grey day and I walked all over the city. These canals were right outside the main Rotterdam station, along with some sculpture art installations. Rotterdam felt more official, like people were there to work. I got a slice of freshly made pizza from a local shop as a late lunch and watched the world go by for a bit.

To get to Paris from Eindhoven, I took the normal NS train to Rotterdam and then boarded a Thalys high speed rail to Paris. I wanted to go early in the morning to Paris so I’d get there around lunchtime (and it wouldn’t be dark when I arrived and had to find my AirBnB), so I stayed a night in Rotterdam and left the next morning. This turned out to be a good decision also because Thalys had issues with the heat during the afternoons. Some trains actually broke down on the tracks because of how hot it was.

I think the most well-known failure that caught media attention left a train was stranded for ~4 hours and people were breaking windows trying to cool themselves down. This happened a day or two before my Thalys trip. Europe was in the middle of a big heat wave, and I was just starting my trip. I thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t book that afternoon train ride.

Boats

Boats. Everywhere. Hey look - Hugo is the name of the code I used to build this website.

The second photo from above is at the Rotterdam Maritime Museum, which was so much cooler than I expected it to be. I discovered a fascination for the model boats they had on display, and was amazed beyond words at some of the nautical themed paintings. Rotterdam was once the largest port in the world!

Imagine that - setting sail without any communications to home, for months on end, with nothing but wind power!

Look at all those little details on this model! Somebody spent a lot of time and it really showed. There were more models and paintings in the museum that I spent time admiring. Rotterdam had some unique architecture too.

Making friends on a bridge and being idiot tourists

At some point, I was walking across a bridge in Rotterdam, and I caught a flick of weird eye contact with the guy walking in front of me. I thought there was no way he was going to bother me - he was there with a woman and it was broad daylight. My guard was pretty high as this was the first day of my big trip, so I didn’t want any trouble on the first day.

He asked me to take his picture, that’s all. Relax, man. I took him and his wife’s picture, he took mine, and we started chatting. I learned he was from Portugal, his name was Mario, and he was here with his wife for the day. He was surprised to hear I was only 23. Eventually he said we should share numbers, and we started to try to figure out first how to try to text each other or call, which didn’t work, and then how to get WhatsApp to recognize my American number on his device, and vice versa for me (there’s some trick about using +00 or some derivative).

This look much longer than I anticipated, and I honestly just looked up and away at some point to try to signal we should just move on. I figured I knew the number now because we tried to call each other, so eventually I could go home and try all the variations of the + and a 0, and one of them would work. But Mario trudged along to try to figure it out, and I had nothing that I was really waiting to do, so took the extra 10 minutes to play with it.

We were interrupted by this sort of loudspeaker message coming from somewhere in Dutch. It was just sounds to us, neither of us knew how to speak the language. We looked up and around, shrugged, and looked back down at our devices to debug.

Again, this time a bit more hasty in tone, the Dutch loudspeakers fired up a few minutes later. By this time we looked up and back, and realized that there was a line of people lined up behind these red and white bars, because the bridge operators were trying to raise the bridge to let a tall boat through underneath.

We both had a good laugh and looked like idiot tourists. The laughter about this ended my annoyance about phone technology immediately. After we parted ways, I saw Mario and his wife later on that day near the train station, and we went to go see some last-minute attraction that they were interested in because of the architecture (both of them were art teachers). Mario, if/when I visit Portugal someday, I will message you and see what you are up to.

Below: Mario in orange with his wife, while she describes how dumb we looked as clueless tourists.

The bedbug scare

I woke up after sleeping one night in Rotterdam at an AirBnB and realized I had a bit of a rash on my arms. I thought nothing of it initially, but then I realized that a few of the bumps were in a line, and some quick Googling revealed this might have been bedbugs. I strategized on how to handle this situation, because I didn’t want to spread them, and also didn’t know if these were actual bed bug bites.

So, I threw out the clothes I slept in and any that touched the bed and moved on. When I got to Paris, I became confident that it was just a heat rash. It was very hot in the room. Still, I don’t regret tossing some of my clothes… better to be safe than sorry, and I have no idea to this day if I dodged a bullet or not.

Bye bye, Rotterdam. Before I talk about Paris, I’ll mention Belgium, which I visited before my longer trip.

Belgium

For only spending a day in Antwerp, Belgium, I sure did take a lot of photos, I imagine because it was so sunny.

Antwerp: Bumpy Biking and a Castle

I spent a day in Antwerp about a week before I went on the long train trip. It was not far from south Holland where my studio was, and I wanted to see what this Belgian city was like. A colleague of mine recommended Ghent, actually, but I never got the chance to go out there and check it out - maybe someday.

Antwerp’s cobblestone roads were much more bumpy than in NL. I rented a bike - one of those silly looking ones with small wheels, and a seat post about 4 feet long to accommodate it - and explored around the city.

The roads and architecture were very pretty. Antwerp is a cute and fun place to explore.

The “Het Steen” castle was cool, and so were a lot of these inviting, homey areas that were sort of walled off from the regular chaos. I’d love to live somewhere out here. It’s like Inferno from CSGO. I imagine waking up and it just being peaceful and sunny like on the right below. I don’t even think cars could reach into many of these areas, I had to go up stairs and around only walkable bends sometimes.

When I took the Thalys through Belgium on my way to Paris, I looked out the window and saw pieces of Belgium - some for the second time. I hadn’t planned to stop in Belgium again; I was eager to see Paris and beyond. Plus, Belgium was so close that I could always make a weekend trip to see something there if I wanted to.

So long Belgium - and back to where I left off about my long train journey.

France

I traveled by train across France, but only stopped in Paris. Which, I know, is not the best way to actually visit and explore France, but I wanted to go see what this city was all about. I spent a week in Paris - too long. After the 4th day or so, I was burnt from the atmosphere… you’ll see why. Nevertheless, it was all around a fun experience.

Paris: Beautiful Insanity

Parks and Gardens

Paris had some really beautiful green areas that I enjoyed exploring a bit, but it was a bit too hot to stick around for too long if no shade was available. Shade is limited. Since everyone takes the shady spots, it was a scarce resource. But, I did get to relax for a bit and watch the hilarious chaos of parents and their kids play with the sailboats at the Jardin du Luxembourg. They had these sorts of long rods that would push the boats around until they caught the wind, and the kids would run all over and nearly poke everybody with them.

The parents would try to control them, but to no avail. The little sailboats were colorfully painted and reminded me of Rotterdam’s ship models that I enjoyed looking at. That whole garden area was beautiful.

It’s too hot

Remember that heat wave I mentioned? It was in full blast at this point. It felt like 100 degrees easily. And a place like Paris is not the best place to be in that scenario: the tourists pack the city tight. I had thrown out my pair of lighter athletic pants that I was planning to wear essentially every day, so I went in and bought a pair of cheap board shorts. I realized later that there was a big hole in one of the pockets, so I brought my shoulder pack everywhere.

Scammers

Immediately off the train I was greeted by scammers and hagglers while I was walking to my AirBnB. One guy hassled me from behind it seemed (because I never saw him), something he said in French that I heard “American” in it, another actually touched my shoulder while he said something, assumedly to ask for money maybe? I made sure to not make eye contact and kept moving. I always put my wallet and passport into a zippered pocket, or better yet, in a zippered pocket deep in my bag if I had it with me so that I could keep track of it.

Others were older women asking you to sign some petition, but I already knew that was a trick to get money, so that one was no surprise to me and didn’t catch me off guard, I actually laughed, and she seemed surprised at that.

Other people just sat on the ground with a cup and waited for tourists to give them money. They didn’t really look homeless, at least not like what homeless people look like in the US, so I imagine they were just scamming. Maybe I’m too cynical. Oh well, I had to be to keep a hold of my cash in Paris, that’s for sure …

Open air art shops

The outdoor art shops were cute and were an interesting mix of actually good art, and lame marked up souvenir trinkets. I don’t have any good pictures of these, but they lined up the sides of the canals on the upper levels, and attracted a lot of attention.

Arc de Triomphe

I walked down the famous Champs-Elysses avenue after taking the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. I will mention that the metro in Paris had the shortest time between doors opening and closing I had ever experienced. It had to be something like maybe 8 seconds, and they would shut and the train would keep going. Seems they have it figured out though, because the trains were constant and you could get one reliably, or wait like a minute and a half for the next one to come barrelling in.

I had beautiful weather in Paris, but wow it was hot.

Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower was a must see, but I wasn’t sure if I would actually go up into it or not. It was so hot and the place was packed. After some thought, I did end up waiting in line and walking up to the first and second platforms. The final, highest platform was closed during this time, but the views from the first and second were absolutely beautiful.

Pantheon & Sainte-Chapelle

The place I was staying was right next to the Pantheon, which was incredible just for the size of the columns and height of the structure. It really is a wonder how these places were built years ago. The larger-than-life paintings on the walls were absolutely stunning.

The Sainte-Chapelle was beautiful, but it was far too crowded to actually enjoy it. There was so much to read about the different stained glass pictures and what they depicted, but the atmosphere was not very conducive to enjoy it. Seriously, there were way too many people in there - the hosts had to keep “shushing” everyone to quiet down. Regardless, it was very pretty!

The Louvre & Chloe

Yup, I was that tourist who showed up at the Louvre at 9am in the summer without a ticket. The line was probably 800 feet long? All in all, I waited for about 3-4 hours. It obviously started to get really hot, and I tried to conserve my water. Naturally, I fell into the sunk-cost fallacy and figured I’d push through to the end. I got lucky that they even let more people in, because the place was packed.

During the time waiting, I made friends with a Chinese girl named Chloe who was traveling alone too.

My Louvre favorites

• Large frescos
• Impressionism and landscapes
• Ceramics and carpets

The size of these larger works always impresses me. I was also jealous of some of these incredible carpets that were hand-stitched ages ago. The detail and handiwork was awesome. It made me want a quality carpet.

Blue and teal designs on white ceramic resonate well with me. After a few hours inside, I got to a spot where I could look out the window and saw that the line of people had dissipated - before, people were lined up the whole length of this yard and beyond.

I didn’t even bother to try to get close to the Mona Lisa or anything like that. Chloe and I hung out together and explored what we could. I saw Chloe again a few days later to go get ice cream and do something, I forget exactly what we did another afternoon while we were both still in town. She was accepted for fashion school in Sweden and went back there at some point. I’ve forgotten to stay in touch, I should text her now that I’m thinking about it.

An Illegal AirBnB?

At some point I got a message from my AirBnB host warning me that the landlords didn’t like the AirBnB I was at and that if they ever asked, just make something up about how we knew each other and don’t mention AirBnB. I was a little peeved about it but said screw it, fine, this is the least of my worries, I’m 23 and solo traveling Europe ffs.

Of course, one day I entered the place at the exact moment when the landlords were about to walk out, and they followed me in and asked me questions. I lied pretty well (I think?) and they tried to call the host, but of course he didn’t pick up. They said he wasn’t allowed to rent the place due to the terms of his lease, essentially. They didn’t speak English well, which worked to my advantage, because they had to get some other girl to come out from the room nearby and translate for them. I told them I was leaving on Tuesday, and that the host would be back there in the morning. Fun fact: I left Monday.

French people hate tourists, and I don’t blame them

French people were a bit rough. Some dudes got into an argument outside my room late at night, like 3am or something. I heard one guy get punched hard and fall (pass out?), I could tell the sound of the flesh getting hit and then him collapsing.

The French people in Paris weren’t terribly friendly to tourists unless they were shop owners, and honestly I can’t blame them. If I lived there and had all those millions of people come in and bombard the place every year, I’d go crazy. My patience was already thin after just a few days in town.

Rock and Mineral Gallery

One unique attraction I chose to visit was the “Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology”. It was small, but I needed some downtime to be away from the big crowds. I love geological stuff like this. The red rock is called “Rhodochrosite”.

I thought I could escape Paris in here, but then some French local (I assume) in front of me in line got into an argument with the main desk about the opening time of the place. I’m fairly sure that’s what it was about, because he was there waiting before the doors opened. I couldn’t understand the French, but it was a nice reminder of the culture :)

Travel laundry, woo!

Something else I did in Paris was I did wash for the first time during traveling. It was an easy process, and now I’m glad I didn’t bring absurd amounts of tshirts and stuff and instead chose to just wash as I travelled.

Pro tip: bring some washing machine pods in your travel bag (Tide pods, or generic whatever). This makes it a lot easier because otherwise you have buy it from the laundromat, and they might be out, or it might take so many coins that it’s annnoying. It’s doable, but just having like 3 washer pods in a plastic bag your backpack (in case one of them gets crushed and bursts or something) weighs almost nothing and that’s good for at least a few weeks of traveling.

Food

I ate the best Italian meal in my life in Paris. I got this ravioli in a yellow sauce with arugula, and wow it was amazing. I did try some French macarons, but I wasn’t terribly impressed, it was like eating a soft cookie. Maybe it was just too hot and I didn’t focus enough on the taste.

A few last pictures - me on the Eiffel tower, and an upwards shot at the columns of the Pantheon.

So long, Paris! Off to see some mountains! I snuck out of the AirBnB and went to the train station around 6am.

Switzerland

Of all the countries I planned to visit, I was most excited to see Switzerland. Being a fan of the mountains (my family vacataioned in New Hampshire my whole childhood), I was definitely excited to see some Alps. I had only seen bits and pieces of them from drone flying videos before, and imagined that seeing them first-hand would leave me awestruck.

Switzerland is known to be an expensive place to travel, so I figured I would stay in an AirBnB for 4 days or so instead of a full week. The plan was to use of those days to take a trip to Lucerne (about an hour by train). In Lucerne, I could ride one of the gondolas up into the mountains!

A train crossing a bridge near Rhine Falls, outside of Zurich. One of my favorite photos from the trip.

Zurich: Beauty, Bougie

Zurich was clean, full of rich people, and exceptionally beautiful. I converted Euros to Swiss Francs before I went, but I only did like 60 CHF… I expected to mostly use my debit card, which ended up working fine. These blue waters were exceptional - look at how clear and clean they look. The architecture of my AirBnB was more open and had huge windows. I felt like I could breathe again after the chaos of Paris.

Immediately hurt myself

Somehow I got my hand stuck in an automatic door that connected to the stairwell of my AirBnB the first morning I was there. I moved the handle to the side to get it to automatically open, because it was before the opening hours of the pharmacy that the place connected to. I wasn’t expecting it to basically slam shut immediately after opening like 8 inches, so my hand got caught in it. Luckily it was padded but it did hurt for a minute after I ripped it out. The door had to close fully before I could use the handle again and get it to open. It was one of those moments I had that “shock” feeling where the machine was fighting against me, and I wasn’t sure if it would end up hurting me really badly, so I got a nice boost of adrenaline.

My room was right next to a tram stop, so I got to use that to get into downtown. It was a nice place! I ate out a bit less here than other places, as it was all expensive, but this time I had a larger place to stay with a fridge to share with the host, and it was overall a relaxing and enjoyable environment.

I rented a bike here for a few hours one day, unlike Paris, where I didn’t dare to get on two wheels. Downtown was beautiful - really - that bright blue mountain water really stuck out and the place was clean and modern. It was definitely a fancier place with a bunch of sports cars around, but still felt inviting and happy.

Swimming to cool down, found the nudists

Cooling down was always a top priority, and I got ice cream by the water. A few days later, I swam in the lake in Zurich! I went to the far end away from most people, and then realized that there were a bunch of nudists on the other side of the bushes down there, but it was too late and I was already in the water.

Lucerne: Mountains!

It was finally time! I checked the weather, bought the gondola tickets and hopped on the train. It was mountain time!

Lucerne was a beautiful place, and I did spend a little bit of time walking around downtown.

Again, these blue waters were simply astonishing to see, especially with the mountains in the background.

Mt. Pilatus

I showed up in the morning to the base of Mt. Pilatus just in case it was busy, but it wasn’t, and I already had a QR code for my ticket. I walked in, and within 5 minutes was on the gondola. The trip to the top (7000 feet) is split up into a few sections. The final section is not a small little 4-seater gondola, it’s like a whole room.

I was joined by a local on my trip up. He said he spoke a little bit of English, and then we had a whole conversation like we were both native speakers. This is how Europeans are, they are too humble about their language skills. The onnly thing he messed up was he said it was “dusty” instead of “foggy”. I think to myself, there’s no way I would be able to have the level of conversation with him in another language if I only knew “a little bit”. Europeans are funny.

Mt. Pilatus was an amazing experience. The gondola rides were out of this world! On the top there was more to explore, different paths and one that went straight through the rock to the other side of a mountain top. I breathed in the fresh mountain air with joy.

There is a hotel and buildings on top which are such an engineering marvel to see.

You can see the walkway on the side of the mountain I got to hike.

Notice the red train on the side of the mountain, making its way up to the hotel.

Here is one more picture of downtown (left). On the right: a performance on top of Mt. Pilatus.

Really, the pictures speak for themselves. After a few hours on the summit, I took the gondolas back down, stopping at one of the intermediary sections and getting out to briefly take a walk. It was all timed well - the other tourists were now coming up in full swing, and I was already gone before it got really busy. I never had to wait for a gondola :)

I was sad to leave Switzerland, but it was far too expensive to stay for too much longer - I definitely planned it right to stay for less than a week.

Germany

My final 9 days or so were spent in Germany. Most of this time was spent in Berlin. I took the train from Zurich to Frankfurt, stayed for a night and then traveled all the way across the country on the train to Berlin. The plan was to see how I felt and if I wanted to continue north through Copenhagen and up into Scandinavia, I could switch somewhere near Hamburg after coming from Berlin and make my way up there. If I got tired, the plan was to take the train west to Dusseldorf and make my way back into NL.

Frankfurt: A casual stop to break apart the train rides

I picked a cool museum to check out in Frankfurt, and a few smaller attractions that I wanted to walk to. Something that really stuck out was the areas around the train station were super sketchy, wow. I walked through what felt like drug kingpin alley twice while I was there, and then one more time in the morning to get back to the station and be on my way. The rest of the place though was well kept.

I ate a big breakfast… it was dino museum day.

I will admit that I didn’t really do my research much on what was in Frankfurt to actually check out. Downtown I found some interesting architecture. I was only here to break apart the Zurich to Berlin trip, and it worked out well.

Berlin: Hip and Happening

After a 6 hour rail trip east, I had seen a lot of Germany whiz by on the train. I made a mistake and got off the train one stop before (it was delayed and the timetable changed), so I didn’t actually start my journey at the central station. I had many hours to use before I could check into my room, so I wasn’t worried.

I learned beforehand from someone (Mario, maybe) that there was a 9 euro train ticket I could get, so I’d only pay 9 euros for my use of the metro while I was there! What a great deal. I got that and took the metro into the center of town.

I showed up in Berlin and there was some sort of weed event that was going on. I proceeded to rent a bike and cycled through the Tiergarten, saw the Brandenburger Tor and the Berliner Dom.

The dom was actually a nice place to just hang out and watch the world go by. I was in no rush because my room wasn’t available until later that afternoon, so I laid down on the grass here and closed my eyes.

Berlin had well-priced food. Not too expensive, not cheap garbage, just right. I could get a good portion Chinese meal with the meat, vegetables, rice, and a gingerale and not feel like I broke the bank. This Chinese meal was a godsend because I was really hungry.

Although, it is annoying that in Europe they give out such small drinks. This glass wasn’t half full because I drank half of it - this is all they gave me. I had to get used to drinking after I was done eating, that’s the trick, that way I didn’t sip it a bunch of times and realize there was nothing left by the end of the meal.

Museum Island

Museum Island was something that I should have planned a little further in advance, but I was lucky that I did get to go into some of the museums even with only a days notice buying the tickets online beforehand. The museums were busy, but not packed, and had all sorts of interesting artifacts.

I found the cuneiform tablets and hieroglyphics particularly fascinating. The cuneiform was written much smaller than I imagined! It was just like a regular person had picked up a pen and wrote letters into clay. I had always assumed that it would be larger because you’d need finer tools and a less malleable surface to make it readable at this size. But no, ancient people were crafty and made it work.

More Live Music, Outdoor Market

I loved how I could just walk around Berlin and stuff would be happening, so it felt like I wasn’t just awkwardly looking at the city and its features alone. There were people out and about at these events and stuff, hanging out, enjoying themselves. I felt surprisingly not out of place.

It felt like Berlin was a place where people were legitimately accustomed to hanging out in public, which is something that I just never grew up doing. Here, there were just people around, and they weren’t waiting for something or going somewhere right away, they were just happily chilling.

There was more live music outside of just the weed event, I think some of it was lip syncing here. This guy got up on stage who was very confident, probably drunk, and sang something horribly, but everybody kind of felt that it was just a party so it didn’t matter.

And there was a lot of people here! I legitimately just stumbled upon an outdoor market that was connected to this outdoor arena area. I like to think it was just me having good luck, but it seems that these sorts of events were all over in Berlin, so probably anywhere I would have gone there would have been something happening.

The thing with Berlin was that there was a lot of bigger spaces, either with trees or just open spaces to set up outdoor activities. It didn’t feel like a densely packed city, it felt well spread out and enjoyable. The trams made it easy to get around on my 9 euro ticket.

Chaotic scammer games

Throughout my time in Berlin I saw many scammers. The ones that really stuck out were actually entire groups of them taking people’s money in fake gambling games. One guy would sit on the ground and play some fast-paced dice game with a cup, hiding the dice and making them re-appear, and they’d all shout in German when something happened that was important in the game.

I don’t really think anyone understood how it worked before “buying in”, and the money was just lost to the house regardless. It was pretty well set up - they’d get 5 or 6 guys out there to whoop and holler and get other men to join in on it, and then just take their money and pretend they didn’t understand the game. Or at least, that’s what it looked like from afar.

I saw the same guys pulling this stunt near an outdoor market by the Dom and then again at Checkpoint Charlie.

AirBnB with a Piano!

My AirBnB had a piano in it! I hadn’t played in years but still opened the cover and played with it a bit. My host was very nice, I got to meet her whole family. They made me food and we talked for a long time. If I go back, I will text them and see what’s up.

Swimming

To get away from the city, I took the train like 40 minutes down to this lake called “Strandbad Wannsee”, which I was not expecting to be as big and well maintained as it was. It was like going to the beach.

Radio Tower

Berlin’s radio tower wasn’t something I was planning to visit, but I ended up nearby and said screw it, I’ll buy a ticket and go up in it. The view was great, and the platform had all these explanation placards that aligned with the viewpoint, so you could look at the diagrams and learn what you were looking at.

Berlin Wall

I got engrossed in some of the history of the Berlin wall when I went down to Checkpoint Charlie and also went to see some of the remains. I purposefully didn’t take too many pictures of it. Honestly, it was unnerving. To think that it blocked people from living better lives, and that people died crossing or trying to, is scary. It made me proud of my country that we fought against communism.

Dusseldorf: Final Stop

After Berlin, I was tired. I had traveled a lot in the last 3 weeks or so, and towards the end of my week in Berlin, I decided to end this long journey with one last stop in Dusseldorf for half a day (to break apart an 7-hour train journey), before making it back to the Netherlands.

I was eager to get home at this point. After arriving in Dusseldorf, I walked a bit around the botanical gardens, saw this cool old car and made small talk with the owner, got hassled by some assumed scammer downtown, and called it a wrap. I got on the train an hour early to head home than I was planning to. I was ready to be back at home base again.

I was trying to relax and sat down next to the water downtown when this guy showed up with his young kid and started spreading food, so an entire squad of ducks showed up to feast. I thought it was funny and really wasn’t irritated by it - but why did he sit almost right in front of me with all the other space around?

I walked on the paths by the water around Dusseldorf too. In general this was a very spacious city.

From Dusseldorf, I took the train back into NL to Eindhoven, and I was back at home base. Over the remaining few weeks before my job started, I traveled more of NL and got accustomed to the area I was in.

Final Thoughts

Wow, this came out really long. I had a lot to share, and tons of pictures. I spent probably 4 hours just copying the photos from my phone, curating them and fitting them to the right sizes. If anyone reads all this and scrolls through, thank you! I hope you enjoyed the adventure.

Culture & Language

Yes, the culture is much different out in Europe, but it is not shocking. I might go more in depth on this in another page, but really Europeans seem smart and very capable, especially with communication (languages), and being open. I had almost entirely good experiences, minus a few scammers and not super friendly Parisians. I was impressed at how far English took me - I never got into a situation where I couldn’t do something because I didn’t know the local language.

Where would I visit again?

I would love to go back to Switzerland or Berlin. I wouldn’t go back to Paris, but other areas of France would be interesting to explore. Belgium is one place that I could see myself visiting as a getaway to relax or something, but I probably wouldn’t go back in the hopes of finding interesting travel journeys. It is more a place that I’d want to retreat to.

Personal takeaways

I will probably make a post that goes more in-depth about how I’ve changed as a person from this adventure and what really stuck with me as I moved on with my life. I feel that I’m more confident after these adventures, and that I understand European culture better.

This was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and I tried my best to make the most of it. I plan to travel more of Europe and surely will make more fun memories like these!

Cheers,

Dan